But I have to admit, there is one that freaks me out everytime I hear it. You can hear it by visiting
http://www.bermuda-triangle.org/html/sasquatch-bigfoot.html. It should start playing automatically. This sound has often been used as evidence of bigfoot, and I have seen "experts" on more than one show claim that this sound is made by no known animal.
But now it gets a little interesting. On that same page, in the second paragraph, it says this sound is a REPRODUCTION based on eyewitness testimony. That means it's not a recording of bigfoot at all, it's someone's rendition of how they think bigfoot sounds.
This is the first time I have heard this claim, and the site doesn't back it up in any way, so I don't know that it's true. Has anyone else heard this claim before? If it's true, what does that say about the so-called sound experts?
Dfoot (in a 25th March 2008, 12:08 PM posting
here, apparently reading from Greg Long's book) said that Ross Hagen recorded it with Roger Patterson during one of Patterson's visits to Hollywood.
Here are some
old notes I gathered on the "Roger yelling into a bucket" angle:
This website has a version of the sound that's obviously the same "roar," but sounds higher pitched than the scream used in the Youtube video (maybe it's a compression issue?).
I also came across
this BFF thread, in which several people agree that this is indeed Patterson's creation. Apparently, the sound was presented in the film "Bigfoot: Man or Beast" as an "approximation of a scream." Roger Knights, quoting Jerry Merritt's "A Tale of Two Suits" (118) said "He [Patterson] went up to this ol' time church in Yakima ... and asked them if he could climb up in there and make this tape. He went up in the tower and put a bucket over his head and screamed! So he made this tape and slowed it down real slow like a call, like a Bigfoot call."
So he even knew enough to alter the recording in order to make it sound "just right." As many have stated before, Roger Patterson doesn't get the credit he deserves for his intelligence and talent. As for the recording, it'd be interesting to submit it for sound analysis to see if we get the ol' "couldn't have been made by a human" result.
This thread notes that Patterson based his recreation off the descriptions given by people in Yakima who had heard what they thought was Bigfoot. Some might find it suspicious that Patterson would be able to successfully recreate (and know the proper method to recreate) a supposed Bigfoot roar in the Yakima area. I'm not one of them, mainly due to those elk and red stag sound related materials that I found. I just think that Roger Patterson was clever/talented enough to do a good imitation of an elk. After all,
they do seem to have them in the Yakima area.
Page 2 of
this thread gives us this choice quote by a poster called "billkirbywofb":
Here is what I remember from 41 years ago. Patterson was contacted by a TV program or a film company to provide a bigfoot howl. After attempts to get a recording in the wilds, and a deadline approching, Patterson came up with this audio. (After all we know the problem of getting a b.f. vocalization on demand) When I met Patterson, in 1966, he had an audio tape. But as I remember, it was not that impresive and not the one were are talking about. I could see the producers that contacted Patterson saying "Well that is nice, but we need something better". And Patterson came up with something that pleased them.
I question the bell tower of a church story. There were not that many bell towers in Yakima at that time. And those were pretty well secured. After all you do not want to allow any of the local kids to get into the tower at 3:00 in the morning to ring the bell. And wake up half of the community. I suspect that there would have been other rooms or building that would have had a better reverb quality required to make the sound in the area. So I kinda doubt this part of the story.
And if this guy is correct about Patterson not being able to gain access to a bell tower, wouldn't this imply that Roger Patterson was lying? Then again, this person didn't seem to read the part about Patterson getting permission to use it and not sneaking in like this guy thinks he did. However, the part about Patterson making a recreation when the "real stuff" just wouldn't do is pretty amusing (and thought provoking) if the poster's claims are true...
Here are some notes I came up with that eventually led to me identifying a possible source of the original noises people were hearing:
As several of the elk sound recordings
here show, elk can make some rather apelike noises. You can hear more elk noises
here.
I've heard that a
deer screaming sounds rather eerie as well. In addition to the sounds given there, I have found
another website with several deer sound effects.
This video starts with what's supposedly the sound of a Bigfoot roaring (the comments claim it was lifted from "The Legend of Boggy Creek") and one of the commenters (panikdapig) notes that the beginning of the roar sounds like that of a European Red Deer.
This site says that "It is impossible to accurately describe the range of sounds that a male red deer can make--the animal can sound like a howling wolf, screaming howler monkey or even a fog horn. " According to an article cited on the
Wikipedia entry on the subject:
Male European Red Deer have a distinctive "roar" during the rut, which is an adaptation to forested environments, as opposed to male Wapiti (or American Elk) which "bugle" during the rut in adaptation to open environments. The male deer roars to keep his harem of females together. The females are initially attracted to those males that both roar most often and have the loudest roar call. Males also use the roar call when competing with other males for females during the rut, and along with other forms of posturing and antler fights, is a method used by the males to establish dominance. Roaring is most common during the early dawn and late evening, which is also when the crepuscular deer are most active in general.
If I'm reading correctly, that article also seems to say that red deer and elk were once considered to be the same animal until DNA testing revealed enough differences for them to be considered separate species.
This video shows that European Red Deer are more than fine with roaring during the day. The entry also notes that elk and red deer are closely related.
I should also note that it appears that some
European Red Deer are kept in ranches in parts of the USA.
Here is a video of a red stag roaring in a way that would sound quite similar to Patterson's "Bigfoot roar" if its voice was deeper and it did certain noises in a different order.
